Responding to Brexit: taking the political initiative

This three part series considers key inter-related aspects
of the current political upheaval facing the citizens and countries of Europe.
This first article examines how the European political class should respond.

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January 28, 2017. President Donald Trump, having spoken to Chancellor Merkel for 45 minutes, on the phone to President Putin. Wikicommons/Sean Spicer, White House press secretary. Some rights reserved.The week after the UK voted to leave the European Union,
Nigel Farage went to the European Parliament and bragged that this was the
beginning of the end for the European project. Most MEPs laughed, while
government leaders and EU Commissioners trotted out well-worn clichés about
Europe’s resilience. They didn’t sense the danger. They do now.

Europe’s political leaders are starting to acknowledge that
this nationalist and authoritarian upsurge intends to destroy both the
trans-national structures of post-war Europe and the values that have
underpinned them. The flow of barbed asides, tweets and comments directed
against both Europe and Germany from US President Trump and his closest
associates just keep on coming.

These trends have not just dropped from the sky. Two decades
ago the most hard-line neo-Conservatives organised a key influential
think-tank, the Project for the New American Century, which strove to create a
unipolar world revolving around US global leadership.

Their supporters dominated the first George W. Bush
administration but their hopes for American hegemony foundered in the killing
fields of Iraq. Trump offers an even more aggressive, nationalistic version of
that dream. The official slogan is ‘Make America Great Again’ but the reality
is that he intends to Make America Supreme Again. Alongside China, an effective
European Union with a Europeanised Germany at its heart is one of the main
obstacles standing in his way. A fragmented Europe of small nation states is
his strategic goal. Farage has paved the way; he hopes that Wilders, Le Pen and
Grillo will follow. He envisages a crumbling Europe where a succession of
pliant European politicians will then journey to the White House pleading for
favours. Theresa May is the template. None of this is inevitable. However, to
avoid this doomsday scenario Europe has to change – and fast. The immediate
challenge is how to respond to Brexit. To avoid
this doomsday scenario Europe has to change – and fast. The immediate challenge
is how to respond to Brexit.

The ‘nationalist
plan’

Trump and the nationalists want to break up Europe. They
want the hardest, sharpest possible Brexit. They have succeeded in taking Theresa
May’s government down that path with Labour following timidly in tow. It
needn’t be that way. But that requires new leadership, flexibility and
imagination from Europe’s political leadership.

Firstly, the EU should take the political initiative. It should
state its negotiating stance in a proper White Paper. This should clearly
declare that for reasons of economics, geography, history and culture a close
working partnership between the UK and the Continent is in the interests of
both parties. In the twenty first century, economics has leapt the boundaries
of the nation state. Our economic, financial and commercial lives are
inextricably intertwined. This is true not just in classic engineering
industries such as cars and aircraft with their lengthy supply chains, but also
in areas such as the processed food industry, banking and tourism. The removal
of the UK from Europe’s Single Market would seriously weaken both partners.

A participation agreement such as occurs with both Norway
and Switzerland would help to retain Europe’s overall cohesion and economic
effectiveness. At the same time the White Paper should stress the importance of
on-going collaboration in the fields of science, technology and research so
that there is no fracturing of the European-wide research community.

Secondly, discard the wooden clichés and negative rhetoric that keeps
recurring in the statements of Donald Tusk, Jean-Claude Juncker and co. Drop
the argument that the UK must get a worse deal than it had before. The fact is
that the very act of political exclusion puts the UK in a much worse position,
since in any Single Market access deal, it would be signing up to a set of
rules which from now on it will have no role in setting.

No more secret
negotiations

Thirdly, Europe should take the
democratic initiative. This should not be a secret negotiation behind closed
doors, as the UK government desperately desires. Having set out its negotiating
objectives in a White Paper, the negotiating team should report monthly to the
European Parliament and give the Parliament the opportunity for discussion and
debate. In this way it would be acting
as the vehicle for scrutiny and accountability of the whole process, thereby
wresting control away from the UK government and reducing the impact of an
assiduous flow of leaks to its favoured newspapers. Regular Parliamentary
discussions would be precisely ‘the running commentary’ that both the British
and European publics are entitled to know about and of which the UK government is
so scared.

Fourthly,
the EU should unilaterally indicate that it will extend the negotiating period
beyond the stated two years. That power lies with the Council of Ministers
under Article 50. Such an extension
would accord with Angela Merkel’s statement immediately after Brexit that “ in the European
treaties there is a clear set and orderly procedure for member states who want
to leave the European Union. This procedure involves several years of
negotiations…”[1]This gives the time necessary for
a complex set of negotiations to be completed. But it also means that the EU’s
offer to the UK remains on the table until after the next UK General Election.
In this way, the ‘soft Brexit’ option – Britain managing migration within the
Single Market – would be a viable proposition for all opposition parties to
campaign for. Give the electorate a choice as to
whether to pursue the current government’s proposed abrupt rupture from Europe
and its associated headlong embrace of Donald Trump or whether it prefers the
less disruptive option.

It
would remove the unrealistic call for a second referendum but give the
electorate a choice as to whether to pursue the current government’s proposed
abrupt rupture from Europe and its associated headlong embrace of Donald Trump
or whether it prefers the less disruptive option. This offer would provide the
best conditions for Europe to retain cohesive working relations with the UK.
The UK government will dislike intensely this approach but many businesses and companies
will quietly welcome it. Already, both the Institute of Directors and the
British Chambers of Commerce have proposed an extension of the negotiating
period to give the necessary time to enable effective economic arrangements to
be put in place.

Strategic nous

The European project is facing a dire crisis. This 4 point
plan would give a serious chance for a British departure from the European
Union with the least damage. And it would show that the EU has the strategic
nous and imagination both to address issues such as migration and to put those
advocating Europe’s break-up on the back foot.

Linked with this plan Europe has a number of strong cards to
play. Just to suggest three. Firstly, if the UK does not play ball, then it is
clear that the exclusion of vast swathes of the service economy from the Single
Market will be profoundly harmful to the UK. The absence of ‘passporting’
facilities for banking, financial, accountancy, legal and other services will
have severely detrimental impacts on many parts of the UK economy. The EU should avoid
raising the stakes in areas which would be mutually harmful, as May did in her
speech in threatening to withdraw security co-operation.

Secondly, the EU should signal publicly that should the UK
leave the Single Market then the EU would unreservedly welcome Scotland as an
immediate full member. The EU needs to say clearly to the Spanish government
that there is no comparison with the situation with Catalonia. Spain is neither
proposing to leave the EU nor the Single Market. The EU project is being
undermined. It needs to show that it is prepared to defend itself and welcome
those such as Scotland who would want to join it should the UK pursue a hard
Brexit. Thirdly, it could say that there would be no fast-tracking for UK
passport holders at EU ports and airports. UK citizens would be treated as all
other foreign nationals.

While there are strong cards to play, the EU should avoid
raising the stakes in areas which would be mutually harmful, as May did in her
speech in threatening to withdraw security co-operation. The White Paper should offer a proper
cooperative relationship with the UK and help to avoid the conditions where
Britain’s relations with Europe ‘fall off a cliff’ with disastrous results all
round. The steps suggested here would regain both the political and democratic
initiative for the EU. Are there European politicians with the flexibility and
capacity to address the challenge? And UK politicians able to respond to them?

Next part of Responding
to Brexit – Returning to a social market model on migration

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